Quillis: Take your time. You all right?
Bianco: John was the one who got me into therapy and got me on track to…back to myself, I guess. I got through it.
Quillis: It’s all right.
Bianco: I got through it but I don’t think I ever got over it. I can’t… I lost things I’ll never get back… Sorry, this is hard. It’s… In a lot of ways I’m still two people. Part of me has moved on and evolved yet part of me is still haunted. The shooting changed me. It changed who I was and for a long time I didn’t like…her.
Quillis: It’s all right. Come on, let’s take a break. Get some water.
Jones: Quillis comforts Bianco, leading her down by the side of the stage where they stretch together. They are in their thirties now. Quillis is a principal dancer with the Boston Ballet. Daisy Bianco danced two years with the Pennsylvania Ballet. She did a season with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York City and then went on tour with The Phantom of the Opera, in the role of Meg Giry. In 1999 she received an invitation from her former partner, Will Kaeger, to join the ballet company he was now heading in his home city of Saint John, New Brunswick.
Bianco: Once he was my partner, now he’s my boss.
Kaeger: We are always partners. I don’t dance with anyone the way I dance with Dais. Right from the start, when we were put together her freshman year, we had something special. It’s hard to explain. She’s calm, poised and cerebral. I’m an impulsive lunatic. But somehow those two things meshed into…us.
Bianco: We always partnered by pure instinct. So it was frustrating after the shooting. We had to relearn so much because of our injuries. All this thinking was required.
Kaeger: But we partner now in totally unique ways, and those came out of our injuries. But you’re right, I remember the first time we went into supported adagio class after the shooting. I didn’t think two fingers were going to make much of a difference but it was a disaster.
Bianco: We left in tears.
Kaeger: Tears. I’d lost sensation in this hand so I couldn’t hold onto her, couldn’t feel her weight when I was lifting her. We were falling all over the place, it was really discouraging. I was actually really freaked out by it. But little by little it became instinctive again. Dais knew how to work around my bad hand and I knew how she was going to compensate for her leg. This whole other dimension of our partnership emerged. And we had the bond of experience, too.
Bianco: War mates.
Jones: Apart from the emotional memories, was it difficult to stage this piece after not performing together for so long?
Kaeger: No. Piece of cake. I can partner her in my sleep.
Bianco: And I love this pas de deux so much.
Kaeger: It’s from the George Balanchine ballet Who Cares? set to the song “The Man I Love.” I’ve never danced it anywhere but this theater. And never with anyone but Dais.
Bianco: I’m grateful the music holds no memory of the shooting for me. I can hear it and not be reminded.
Kaeger: It reminds me of Marie though.
Bianco: It does. Her death was a bitter loss to the conservatory. In the aftermath of the shooting and trying to recover and come back and dance again, it was devastating not having her. Something was just missing from this building. I never stopped looking for her. I’m looking for her right now, yelling notes from the orchestra.
Kaeger: She was crazy. She had an energy like… If you couldn’t keep up, then you best just get the hell out of the way. She wanted one hundred and ten percent from you all the time. But you couldn’t help but want to give it to her. She drove you to do better. She made you want to do better.
Bianco: She made you believe in yourself. She said, ‘You dance well. You must dance well.’ And she was so fun, you hardly realized she was running you ragged. I try to channel her when I teach now. All her humor and motivation and energy.